The mating game

At the same time, I had to admit to myself that there were ways in which a 10-year gap could benefit both parties. Many an anxious 35-year-old woman might be thrilled to meet up with an affluent and also eager 45-year-old, since the likelihood was greater she could take time off from working through his largess. He might even be (as one 53-year-old man reasoned to me) semiretired, therefore more available for diaper duty. But though still holding open the possibility of falling wildly in love, I sensed that scenario wasn't likely for me. What I wanted, above all else, was to be with a peer: someone within a few years of my age and, more significantly, at a similar place in life.

I didn't disavow that someone 10 years older might have something in common with me, but when I met these men, it was rarely the case. Their grizzled hair (or what was left of it), paunchy bellies and lined faces placed them in a life stage that seemed distant from mine -- still finding my way into a new career, longing to start down the path to family with someone also navigating the way for the first time. The subtle (and often not so subtle) message I sensed was that it was fine to be above 45 and starting a family as a man, but not as a woman.

Listening to my female friends talk of going it alone, bypassing a partner in favor of a few vials of sperm, deliberately separating mating from procreating, and how much simpler it seemed once the two were specifically unjoined, the idea began to fix itself in my head. I asked one 49-year-old man, who claimed a peripatetic academic path and a bad mustache had kept him from a serious relationship over the past 15 years, what he would do if he turned the corner on 50 and was still unattached. He didn't know, he said, but all he did know was, he suddenly desperately needed to have a wife and a child. When I pressed him further -- how old was too old? -- he nearly wept as he admitted how crushing it would be to let his dream die. One clock ticked out how old he would be when he had his imagined toddlers, while another calculated how much younger down the age scale he'd have to reach for a partner. When I later saw his profile posted on a new dating site, with five years shaved off his age, the poignancy of his plight only confused my sympathies once again.

I found myself suddenly realizing, and saying, that I would never let that become my fate. If I turned 40 alone, I would make the decision to have a child on my own or forgo the dream, but it would be an active choice. And for a brief moment, I felt a surge of empowerment. I realized that as a woman, I could make it all happen directly, if needed. If a child became my sole goal, that was closer to my grasp than it would ever be for him, and I couldn't help feeling a schadenfreude-like sense of temporary relief.

In Houston, my students, some 21 and pregnant, some 21 and already parents, seemed as fumbling and awkward as puppies. Many, I knew, were bound never to finish their college degrees. Many, I knew, were equally bound for divorce or partnerships that reflected naive choices. They would have bad matches, damaging marriages, relationships that set them up for trouble it might take years, or even a lifetime, to undo. I wondered how many of them would even know what they didn't know about love when they picked a spouse at 21. Or, when they had ever been only with a high school boyfriend, if they would realize how dramatically different sex can be with each new partner. They weren't ever going to be able to choose a relationship from column A to suit one mood, column B for another. But, I had to admit, they might also dance at their 50th wedding anniversary party, something a few calculations forced me to realize I was unlikely to do. It was an awareness that came with wave of pity -- and a twinge of envy.

They were married. They had jumped through the window even though it had opened just a crack, as I e-mailed my panoply of men who seemed to be reaching out to catch the last light streaming in. When I moved from Eastern Time to Central, I never imagined I'd be entering another zone altogether when it came to pacing out my life's milestones. And I'd never thought that at 35 I would suddenly be so aware of my perceived staleness, while so many men, 10 years farther down the line, ached for what youth I still had.

Two years later, degree in my still unringed hand, I left for the left coast and moved another time zone earlier. It was easy enough to change my "geographical preferences" online and start over again -- the pool was larger, as was the state -- but I was still romantically adrift. I found yet more men in their 30s wallowing in the suspended seek-your-bliss attenuation of their just-out-of-college years, who claimed they could never dream of starting families until they had established their careers -- but wouldn't suffer women who'd also invested in a decade or more of soul-searching and wandering before wanting a family. And I started to believe that the consumerlike aspects of online dating only exacerbated the sense of entitlement that browsers felt as they scrolled past mug shots and catchy phrases, waiting for a flicker of something real to break through their stats.

The snap judgments I made, and that I knew were made of me, left me tense and anxious. During one heated discussion, a 43-year-old told me he refused contact with women above age 36, and claimed that women also screened strictly by numbers: height and perceived income. I wouldn't be a baby machine for the solitary man who suddenly needed a family; but so too I knew I likely wouldn't make a love match gauging partner potential by the number of spelling errors a writer made.

I began asking friends to set me up, to help me meet someone "the old-fashioned way," and I curtailed how often I let the encapsulated life histories march across my screen. A few months after a string of disappointing "go sees," as I came to call the Starbucks size-up in which each party had 30 minutes to audition for the role of actual date, I signed off on online dating for good. Then, one night soon after, on a whim I went to meet an old friend who was in town for a conference.

That friend brought along another friend, and though the restaurant was loud and our table filled with unexpected guests, I sensed in him compatibility -- not only in our ages but also in our values, education, careers and curiosity. After dinner everyone scattered to different obligations and disparate cities, but when I received an e-mail from the man a few weeks later I was glad to continue the conversation.

E-mail pings kept our connection alive, and then led to an epistolary spark, quickly followed by a romantic visit. First I met the busy traveler at a chaotic dinner meeting, then I grew to care for the easy wit and graceful charm revealed in his erudite letters. And when finally, at our airport reunion, I saw the cleft chin and hazel eyes, I remembered: Here was a whole person, not a profile.

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